Hold Congress Accountable

About FreedomConnector

Find activists, groups, and events right in your own neighborhood. Join FreedomConnector to get involved and learn more about key issues threatening our economic freedom. Whether you’re looking for like-minded people, trying to boost your existing group’s impact, or simply trying to stay up on current events, FreedomConnector is the place to start. See what’s happening in your state today!

Search FreedomWorks

Resources

Blog

Two House Health Care Bills

Yesterday, November 3rd, 2009, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) introduced a 219-page Republican health care bill to be considered alongside HR 3962, the Democrat’s health care overhaul bill. The Republican bill was submitted as an amendment intended to be a substitute for the entirety of HR 3962. Additionally, the Manager’s Amendment, revisions to the original text of HR 3962, were released today, November 4th, 2009. You will find links to both proposals below.

We’d love to post the text of the Senate Health Care Bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) gave to the Congressional Budget Office last week for cost estimates, but so far he has refused to make it available to the public as well as his 40 Republican colleagues who requested it in this letter.

For decades, the costs of providing health care services have escalated. Congress passed ObamaCare, in part, as a supposed way to control these rising costs. However, the health care market was heavily regulated before ObamaCare. The increased regulations from ObamaCare have not prevented costs from rising, they only work to hamper innovations, which lead to bloated costs.

Many Americans are eagerly (and nervously) awaiting the King v. Burwell decision, which is expected to come at the end of the month. The court case will determine whether ObamaCare, which looks to be falling apart independently of legal intervention, is illegally providing subsidies to those enrolled in the exchange.

California is now considering scrapping its state-run Exchange and moving over to the federal run health care exchange after spending $900 million in federal grant money on its Covered California ObamaCare exchange and running a deficit of $80 million in just the first four months of this year.

The proposed Obamacare premium rates for 2016 are likely to see many double digit increases from the largest providers. The states with the largest increases, as proposed, are New Mexico (51%), Tennessee (36%), Maryland (30%), and Oregon (25%). The final rates will be lower, but they may very well remain in the double-digits because insurers are seeing their first full year of claims data from ObamaCare’s exchanges, and the pool of insurance consumers on the exchanges are tending to be older and sicker than they were hoping to see.

The 16 states with ObamaCare exchanges have each had access to hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money from the federal government to help establish a successful marketplace. And yet, many are finding themselves struggling with high deficits and low enrollment.

It’s been difficult not to notice that a lot of states are having terrible experiences with their ObamaCare exchanges. In fact, a recent Washington Post article reports that “Nearly half of the 17 insurance marketplaces set up by the states and the District under President Obama’s health law are struggling financially.”

A new Kaiser poll finds that 64 percent of Americans unfavorably view the individual mandate—the provision that requires nearly every American to purchase health insurance or else pay a fine. This is no surprise because the individual mandate has always been one of the most politically toxic parts of ObamaCare. You’ll notice that the Obama administration has stayed silent about the unpopular provision in their enrollment push to avoid backlash.

We all know that Nancy Pelosi said "we need to pass the bill to know what's in it," but one of the more insidious problems with Obamacare relates to the rules already in place for Medicaid, and the attempt to move as many applicants to Medicaid as possible.